Jump a Little Higher
by rakatakat
Summary: Fresh meat Peter Kirkland finds out how joyous an all-American high school in 80s can truly be.  first person AU, with mention   appearance of most other characters


heeeeeeeey guys! sorry you might be waiting for updates on other stories but this is just something i wrote on a whim for tumblr that i'll throw on here to prove i'm not dead heh;; if you like it let me now so i'll plan out more characters and actually add this to the list of things that will get updated! (also, maybe you should give the song "Rosalita" a listen...)

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><p>Hi, I'm Peter, and so far, I hate high school.<p>

And that's as good an introduction as any.

Maybe I'm not being fair to high school. After all, I've only been here a grand total of 30 seconds. Maybe the academics will be more gripping than I imagined. Maybe I will burst into flames and have to be rolled out of the public eye. But as soon as I take my first step out of the double doors into the stuffy, crowded halls that reek of teenage desperation with no such luck, all I want to do is take a swift turn on my heel.

And it doesn't help much that my douche of an older brother has ditched me like a bag of flaming dog poop. I don't know what 'douche' means, but I heard him use it to describe a boy on the football team once. My brothers hate the football team more than they hate disco music and Vitamin C combined.

See, as of this point in time, I am a lowly freshman. My brother Arthur is a junior, and is thus forced to deal with me most often. My other brothers, and his band mates, are all seniors. I think they all avoid me equally.

But I don't think they would have been much help to me anyway. The only people that seem to hang around them are girls. They seem to hang around a _lot_. So I want as little to do with them as possible. After all, girls are gross and evil and when you hang around one, you end up in the swamps of Jersey. I know. I listen to my brothers' Bruce Springsteen records.

Anyway, I wind up alone, forced to uphold the lie that I do not, have not, and will not be related to or know of anyone with the last name 'Kirkland' at any point in my existence. As I take my first slow steps down the hall, my thoughts drift into haze. What will my fake name be? Ferris Bueller? Led Zeppelin? Peter-

"Ooof!" the figure I slam into grunts.

"Frampton," I squeak without thinking. There are snickers and a small clearing is formed as we trip about and flail about each other.

"Whoa, whoa!" the boy I knocked into is quicker to regain his balance than I am, and manages to snatch my arm and save me from the face plant the gravity of my books is dragging me to. After a few extra stumbles, I manage to regain relative stability.

I look at the kid incredulously, wondering where he even came from. I didn't notice him before, even in the slightest. He blended into the crowd so easy, it was scary.

He had a soft face, with striking violet eyes behind rounded glasses and limp, long blonde hair that hung at the sides of his face. He was also freakishly tall, with a saggy, oversized letterman jacket on a frame so small, it's comical. There was no way he played sports.

When the commotion subsides, he helps me collect some of my things off the floor, and dusts me off. It was strangely friendly for someone I'd never met.

"You okay, kid?" he asked with a slight gleam of concern.

"Um, yeah…" I assure him, shuffling my papers. "Sorry about that."

He smiles, and flinches as if remembering a harsh joke. "It's fine," he offers. "Happens a lot. Anyway, you're a freshman, right? Today is your first day of high school?"

"Yeah…" I confirm cautiously. He may be scrawny, but he is definitely an upperclassman, and for all I know, a friend of my brother's. I may be mere seconds away from a swirly, or a good ol' fashioned pantsing.

Instead, he just looks at me intrigued, as if I were some undiscovered species. "Cool…" he drifts off as he studies me. "You look really familiar. Do you have any older siblings?"

"No," I rush quickly. "N-none."

"…A Kirkland." he insists. "It's fine, I won't tell your brothers i know who you are. Come on," he gestures and begins to walk. "Most of the freshman classes are downstairs. I'll show you."

I hurry to catch him through the crowds. "Wait, you know them?"

"Almost everybody knows them," he laughed. "They have the most popular garage band in school."

"Garage band…" I repeated. So that's what they do on Friday nights when they make me stay upstairs. All the people over in our yard, just for them?

"I'm Matthew, by the way," he interrupts my thought. "I'm a sophomore. Maybe you know my twin? If you've ever gone to a football game, he's the quarterback of the varsity team."

I thought of someone I knew who annoyed Arthur especially, but it couldn't have been the right guy. They looked nothing alike.

"No, I don't think so," I lied, eyeing his cherry-red jacket. "…Do you play football?"

"Tch, no," Matthew scoffed. "I manage the team and am an assistant to the coach, mostly just to support my brother. I can't help him as much as I'd like to, though…" he absentmindedly twiddled his fingers over the thick books at his side.

"Oh," I said meekly.

"Anyway, didya get a schedule?" he inquired briskly.

"Uhm, yeah," I shoved my hand into my pocket and surfaced a crumpled sheet of yellow paper. Matthew extended his hand, and I unfolded it lamely before handing it over.

He squinted to read the crumple through his glasses. "So your name is Peter," he concluded. "Cool."

Just as Matthew was about to flip to the side with my classes, the bell rang obnoxiously. Kids dispersed and shuffled into a maze of doors.

He cursed, and handed me back the paper. "I was supposed to meet my girl- er, friend by now." He started off in the direction from which we came.

"Your first class is Mr. Fritz," he hollered back at me. "He's old, so sit close to the front!"

And with that piece of advice, he vanished back into thin air, just like how I had found him.

Turning to face an almost empty hall, I hurriedly located a plain door whose only indication of individuality was a brazen number 332 inscribed on its face.

I exhaled, and prepared to take the first step into my very-first, enthralling, exhilarating, real-life high school class.


End file.
